Sen. George McGovern, the Democrats’ ’72 presidential nominee, bought a half-hour of national TV time to speak about how he would withdraw remaining United States forces from Vietnam.

Washington was a target state, and wife Eleanor McGovern was campaigning in Seattle. She watched her husband on a big TV screen set up for a low-budget dinner at the Blessed Sacrament School in the U District. The candidate’s wife shed tears at her husband’s speech.

She went backstage for an interview with newly minted KING-5 news anchor Jean Enersen. Enersen hit McGovern immediately with a tough question about the Vietnam plan her husband had just outlines. McGovern was up on its details, and fired back a detailed answer. In turn, Enersen was ready with a strong followup.

What followed was an intense, back-and-forth 20-minute exchange, all of it over Vietnam and issues central to the campaign. The interview ended with a long, surprisingly cordial handshake.

As the very young local press aide who set up the session, this writer cringed at how Eleanor McGovern and her handlers would react. Instead, McGovern’s eyes were sparkling. The entourage (including a woman from Newsweek) was pumped.

“I have waited the entire campaign to be hit with questions like that,” McGovern explained. “I was able to talk with her about what got us into this.”

She was being driven crazy having to answer questions about how her children were enjoying the campaign, how she kept her outfits wrinkle-free and what it was like having to be a continent apart from Lonesome George. At last, a reporter had engaged her on the substance of the 1972 election.

Eleanor McGovern departed Seattle with a considerable tailwind. The Newsweek reporter vowed to use the Enersen interview as fulcrum to write about a serious, equal partner in the campaign.

The long-ago interview was a signal of trends to come: The spouses of politicians would soon move beyond being decorative appendages, supporting players staying in the background and not saying anything controversial. After all, a wonderfully outspoken Betty Ford would be First Lady two years later.

Enersen brought a Stanford education to her job as a TV news reporter, and had a chance to use it . . . as would later be the case on a pioneering trip to China, in the Soviet Union and interviews with presidents.

The country is now looking, four decades later, at the real prospect that a woman’s place is in the house — the White House.